


The Same as Always

by miss_pryss



Category: Elenium/Tamuli Series - David & Leigh Eddings
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2000-06-18
Updated: 2000-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-14 08:29:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/147328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_pryss/pseuds/miss_pryss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kalten helps Sparhawk with that pesky post-exile sense of alienation. Takes place when Kalten and Sparhawk are reunited in the Chapterhouse after Sparhawk returns from exile in “The Diamond Throne.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same as Always

Sparhawk and Kalten talked for hours. Mostly about old times -- past exploits and mishaps at the Chapterhouse, and childhood mischief at Sparhawk’s father’s farm. Through unspoken agreement, they avoided the grim circumstances of Sparhawk’s exile, Aldreas’ death and Ehlana’s illness. Kalten spent a time telling Sparhawk highly improbable tales about his life in Lamorkand. Most involved him saving the day at the last minute, using feats of incredible strength and bravery in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Sparhawk listened with half an ear, noting silently to himself when Kalten’s adventures more obviously resembled the trash novels the other knight used to read during Sephrenia’s Styric classes.

While Kalten rattled on, Sparhawk took time to reacquaint himself with his friend’s voice and face. In the flickering yellow light of the single lamp, he could see that, not surprisingly, Kalten had visibly aged in the ten years since Sparhawk had last seen him. However, the fine network of lines that now radiated out from the corners of his eyes and the laughing creases around his mouth served not so much to suggest maturity as to provide physical illustration of Kalten’s personality. His general good humor was well represented in the creases that time’s passage had traced across his face, but there was pain there, too, in the lines on his forehead, and the slight sag under his eyes. Sparhawk sighed inwardly, knowing that his friend’s time in Rendor had hardly been the jaunt that Kalten was describing.

Sparhawk himself was feeling the effects of lost years keenly. This almost too-casual reunion only served to strengthen the strange feeling that his life had been put on hold for ten years, while the outside world went on changing -- and, he rather thought, not for the better. Lying on a pallet in the Chapterhouse he had practically grown up in, listening to Kalten spin tale after tale, each becoming less coherent and more slurred than the last as the wine flask got lighter, Sparhawk felt that he had been abruptly wrenched out of a comfortably numb limbo by this crisis. The very thought of his child-queen sick to the death froze his heart in his breast. Seeking to distract himself from his black thoughts, he tuned back into Kalten. The other Knight had pulled his cot up flush with Sparhawk’s and was still spinning a rambling narrative.

“So, I was in this whorehouse, and really I only went in there to avoid the local enforcers, not that I couldn’t have taken them on, of course, but I had this terrible shoulder wound that was positively gushing, Sparhawk, a lesser man would have been dead, and I figured caution was the better part of, of. . . oh, what is it Sir Gerrald used to say, Sparhawk, you know, that old crust who taught that class, you know, with the, um, the books. . .”

Kalten trailed off and sighed, reaching for the flask of memory-aid. Finding it too light indeed, he finished off the last of the wine, and glanced apologetically at Sparhawk, who smiled wryly at Kalten’s attempt at politeness. Kalten belched, then, a long, manly belch, and flopped back down on his cot.

“. . . missed you,” he muttered. “Nothing’s as much fun without you, Sparhawk. You’re such a prickly-pear, you make me work extra-hard to have any fun, and the challenge is what makes it all the more fun.” A pause. “That was entirely too coherent. Sparhawk, I’m not nearly drunk enough.”

The lamp chose that moment to gutter and die. The two Knights lay in the dark in a companionable silence for a while. Sparhawk felt himself relax more than he had since the news of the. . . crisis had reached him one morning in another life, in another world. The velvet dark enfolded the two of them, soft and comfortable, intimate.

Listening to Kalten’s steady breathing at his shoulder, Sparhawk felt an almost unbearable surge of affection for his oldest friend. How many nights had they lain thus, side by side, whispering into the morning? How many nights. . . Sparhawk flushed at the all-too vivid memory of what else they had done, first as best friends discovering the pleasures of the body together, and later as grown men, comrades in arms, finding quiet comfort in each other after the loss of a friend, or a rough, fierce, joy after a victory in battle.

Sparhawk’s breath caught in his throat, a thousand remembered nights rising up in his mind. Next to him, Kalten stirred, muttered, “Sparhawk?” His hand, invisible in the darkness, fumbled for Sparhawk’s face, and, finding it, cupped his jaw gently. Sparhawk swallowed with difficulty. Breathing suddenly became nearly impossible.

“Kalten,” he said softly, hating this kind of sentimental declaration, but unable to put a stop to the words, “I missed you too. I’m so glad you’re still here. Everything else changed so much.”

Kalten’s hand stroked down his neck and curled around his nape as the other man shifted on his cot, leaning towards Sparhawk. He gave a soft *whuff* of amusement, “Sparhawk, I don’t think I could change if I tried. You’re stuck with me.”

Sparhawk could smell the wine on his friend’s breath, a familiar enough scent for Kalten, and underneath, the scent of the man himself, sweet and right and utterly normal. Sparhawk brought his hand up to where Kalten’s clasped his nape and traced his fingers down his friend’s wrist and forearm, following the arm to shoulder, and finding Kalten’s neck, which he wrapped his hand around. He gave a gentle tug, and Kalten rolled entirely off his own cot and onto Sparhawk’s -- onto Sparhawk, mostly.

The cot creaked ominously, and sagged. Kalten giggled. “I don’t know if your bed can survive this, Sparhawk.” He shifted so his weight was supported on the elbow of the arm cradling Sparhawk’s head. The other hand roamed appreciatively down Sparhawk’s side, under the rough nightshirt he wore, and back up his chest, carding through the sparse hairs there. “You haven’t lost a whole lot of weight in the last ten years, and God knows I had way too much time to eat in Rendor.”

Kalten’s hand strayed down Sparhawk’s belly, spreading heat as it went. He lowered his head until it hovered right above Sparhawk’s face, his shaggy hair brushing the other Knight’s cheek. Their mouths brushed, parted, and then found each other again, unerringly despite the absolute darkness of the night. Sparhawk sighed very softly as their lips melted tenderly against each other. The wildest of his nights with Lillias had been essentially joyless compared to the easy simplicity of this contact. He reached up with the hand that wasn’t tangled in Kalten’s hair and slid it down his friend’s naked back, resting it comfortably on the other man’s ass.

Kalten groaned and deepened the kiss. Sparhawk plundered his friend’s mouth as he pulled Kalten down to him, thrusting up, meeting his friend’s arousal with his own. Heat met heat, and Kalten shivered, sliding his arm under Sparhawk’s back and crushing the two of them together. They grappled fiercely, legs tangling, and Sparhawk surrendered the last of his melancholy to a rough joy as Kalten ground his cock against Sparhawk’s.

Sparhawk slid a hand between them and grasped both their cocks, sliding them together, and pumping. The friction threw hot liquid sparks up his spine and across his skin. He gasped into Kalten’s mouth, and Kalten gave a choked moan and broke off the kiss, panting harshly against Sparhawk’s neck.

“Here,” said Sparhawk, bringing both hands up to pull at Kalten’s nightshirt, “Hold on a moment. I want to feel you.”

Kalten reared up, kneeling astride Sparhawk’s thighs, and ripped his own shirt off impatiently, making short work of Sparhawk’s, as well. Sparhawk reached up and ran his hands across Kalten’s furry chest, brushing his thumb across a nipple. Kalten’s easy chuckle gave way to a soft sigh of pleasure, and he lowered himself onto Sparhawk again, nudging Sparhawk’s erection with his own.

They fell into an easy rhythm, rocking against each other, and kissing lazily until the pleasure of their coupling was too great to do anything but pant helplessly. Sparhawk smothered a moan in the fold where Kalten’s neck met his powerfully muscled shoulder, as he felt his completion nearing. In the dark above Sparhawk, Kalten bit off a curse as his powerful thrusts grew ragged, and Sparhawk, undone by his friend’s cry, sank his teeth into the smooth flesh of Kalten’s shoulder as he arched, crushing himself against the other man, and came, and came. A few rough thrusts later, Kalten stiffened, come jetting out hot and slick to mix with Sparhawk’s on their bellies.

The two knights lay, panting, collapsed together on Sparhawk’s cot. Kalten had tucked his face in Sparhawk’s armpit, and lay draped across the other man, seemingly insensible. Sparhawk lay in a half-trance, letting the aftershocks of pleasure course through him. Kalten’s weight was pleasant, pinning him into the sagging mattress, grounding him.

Sparhawk allowed a small smile to play about his lips, still slightly swollen from Kalten’s kisses. Normality, at least, had not departed from this part of his life. Though, he thought wryly, this seemed almost too pleasant, this quiet night, this sweet, cool, dark, this sweat-slicked hairy blanket. No doubt he would have to suffer for this unadulterated luxury at some point. He just hoped it was later rather than sooner.

The cot creaked.

Sparhawk suddenly came wide awake. “Kalten,” he said softly, “Maybe you should get back on your own bed now.”

Kalten muttered something sulky and unintelligible and nestled further into Sparhawk’s armpit.

“Kalten.”

Creak, went the cot.

“Kalten!”

Creak. Groan.

“Kalten!”

A reluctant groan, “What?”

Crash!

*

Snick. The flint caught and the candle lit. Sparhawk raised the candle, and surveyed the ruin he was tangled in. A spring poked him in the back as he lay in the wreckage of his cot. He glared at Kalten, who still lay draped against him, and who was now howling with laughter, the picture of depravity, with come smeared across his chest and belly and genitals, hair standing up in clumps, sweat glistening across his body as he shook helplessly against Sparhawk.

Normality, thought Sparhawk. Wonderful.


End file.
